True Believer wants comic books taken seriously

March 12, 2006|CHRISTIAN ZAVISCA Tribune Correspondent

Works of sequential art -- comic books -- draw huge audiences in Japan. In France, comics are considered the "ninth art," on a par with other forms of artistic expression. A fair number of Americans, however, stigmatize comics as strictly kids' stuff. Matthew J. Smith is looking to change that. On Thursday, he presents "Taking Comic Books Seriously: Reclaiming the Lost Art of Comic Magazines" at Indiana University South Bend. Smith, who is writing a book on the subject, is a former IUSB professor who is now chairman of the communication department at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Smith, a 35-year-old, is, as the legendary Stan Lee would put it, a True Believer in comics as a valuable, grown-up art form. "There is not enough legitimacy granted to this medium," Smith says by telephone. "It's a struggle to get people to accept it. I'm trying to raise the profile of the medium. Public perception is that the medium is not legitimate." Comics are on a par with films and literature in their ability to convey real, human stories, he says. Smith wants his IUSB forum to be interactive, with plenty of questions from and debate with the audience. It's a process that he hopes will be valuable as he develops his book, which he says is a couple of years away from publication. In his research, Smith has found the work of Scott McCloud extremely valuable. McCloud, an artist and critic, explored many of the ideas Smith is interested in with the books "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics," which both use the form of comic books -- cartoon artwork, speech bubbles and so forth -- to advance ideas about the medium itself. The world of comic books is full of contradictions. Films based on comics abound, many of them big hits, yet the market for the comic books themselves has struggled. There are a variety of genres and styles -- some highly creative comics and graphic novels -- out there, but the big companies, D.C. and Marvel, tend to spend most of their time and money promoting self-referential superhero stories that aren't easily accessible to new readers who aren't steeped in the history and jargon of the books, also known as "continuity." Smith points to movies such as "Sin City" and "The Road to Perdition" as examples of standout stories that originated in graphic novels. "If you enjoyed these stories, why not go to the source material?" Smith says. "Hollywood is paying so much attention to comics right now. Something in the core of these stories speaks to people." Three of those stories are cited by Smith as examples of breakthrough successes that have raised the profile of the medium and gained the respect of wider audiences: the anti- superhero epic "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust biography "Maus"; and Neil Gaiman's fantasy-horror series "Sandman." Smith also has brought his ideas into the classroom. In an upper-level course he taught last fall, his students explored some of the questions he's researching, and this coming fall he'll teach "Comic Books as Culture" as an arts course. He says his wife, Susan Sheridan Smith, isn't a fan herself but understands his interest -- she's an avid collector of books. Their 3-year-old twin sons are named Kent and Trevor. And yes, Kent is an homage to Clark Kent. Trevor? He's named in honor of Steve Trevor, a member of Wonder Woman's supporting cast. That's a pretty obscure reference. You'd have to be quite a comics fan to nail it right away. A True Believer, if you will.